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openclipart/user unknown. Public domain.

You are being watched. This classical surveillance
slogan hides a subtler, and more insidious message: you must believe you are always
being watched, and you probably are, but you will never be certain of that, or get
the full picture of how. That is the logic behind the motto. And on this logic
relies the functioning of surveillance’s ghostly dynamics: a logic of uncertainty
and fear.

One of the most well known images of surveillance brilliantly
mirrors this functioning. It comes from George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the leader
of the ruling totalitarian Party, and his name is Big Brother. More
importantly, he is the floating face pervasively reproduced on street posters,
staring at passers by and reiterating the catchphrase ‘Big Brother is watching
you’. Big Brother’s bodiless portrait also pops up repeatedly on electronic
screens. The visual relation he embodies is spectacularly asymmetrical: under
his rule, all screens, including private televisions, have cameras, so that Big
Brother can indeed (maybe) watch everybody. But nobody can look back at him, at
least never beyond the reproductions of his peering face.

Since Edward Snowden leaked strictly confidential
documents on global secret mass-surveillance in May 2013, people have been repeatedly
told they are being watched. As well as read, listened to, and geo-localized. On
the basis of the information contained in the leaked files, journalists have
been revealing to the world precious information on what used to be covert
surveillances practices. They have not, however, divulged it all. Media have
been dis-covering Snowden’s leaks following their own pace, sometimes more
frantically, sometimes less, but always in the understanding that revelations
will go on. Almost a year later, many documents appear to be still to be deciphered,
and much information is yet to be published. The underlying message is, in any
case, always the same: you are being watched (and read, listened to, and
geo-localized), certainly more than you ever imagined, and definitely more than
you (will ever) know.

Staging
surveillance

Like an ever-ending striptease, Snowden’s revelations
are not over, and ‘some of the most
important reporting to be done is yet to come’. This is what Snowden
recently stated during a talk
at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED)
conference in Vancouver, to which he participated virtually, from a secret
shelter in Russia.

The TED talk did not provide any new data about secret
mass surveillance programs. Nonetheless, its stage was the site of a new
revelation: Edward Snowden is a screen. Better: a tele-robot – a face on a monitor
with microphone, speakers and camera, mounted on a wheeled support that he
remotely operates. Unable to travel freely since the United States revoked his
passport in June 2013, the former National Security Agency contractor is now
seemingly condemned to attend this type of social events using more or less
inventive technological staging solutions.

At the event, the visual similarity between robot-Snowden
and Big Brother’s famous floating face did not go unnoticed. On the contrary,
it was openly acknowledged and jokingly embraced, with that special kind of
humour that helps to dissipate in public any deeply troubling realisations.
What if, after all, the link between Edward Snowden and the ghostly dynamics of
surveillance was more complex than imagined?

Glimpses of light

Unquestionably, the former NSA agent has been
instrumental in throwing light on existing mass surveillance practices, which
does not, in itself, play surveillance’s game. Information about the existence
of covert surveillance programs, and especially about their scale and the way they
function, is crucial to foster a much-needed debate on their political
implications.

But the new light has generated as many shadows as newly
illuminated areas. The world now knows it is being watched, read, listened to, and
tracked; but it also knows it ignores exactly how and when, as well as when to
expect conclusive data on the issue. Against this background, every further
announcement of future pending revelations, especially when uttered by a
detached face emerging from a screen, sounds (and looks) like a sign repeatedly
shouting ‘You are being watched’. With slightly different words, the message
delivered by robot-Snowden runs the risk of unwillingly reproducing the same surveillance
impact the messenger wished to denounce in the first place.

Obviously, Edward Snowden is not watching you (or not
anymore). Yet, he may have become the improbable new Big Brother. A very fine
line separates being the poster-boy of counter-surveillance and being surveillance’s
symbol, and the line becomes finer and finer each time he becomes (partially) visible.
While his aesthetic choices may even be a conscious strategy to further
denounce mass-surveillance practices, they do reveal a deadlock in the
possibility to question and address surveillance politically.

The last Big
Brother

Snowden is, in this sense, probably the last Big
Brother, or at least one of the very few around. While fear and uncertainty have
always been important elements at play in power relations, the slogan of modern
surveillance has tended to play a different key. The intended message is nowadays
typically not a threatening ‘we are watching you’, but rather a reassuring ‘you
have nothing to worry about’.

This does not mean that contemporary surveillance
practices are not highly intrusive and challenging for democracies. It merely
means that they are inclined to operate in a slightly different manner. There
is no leader of a totalitarian Party able to (even pretend to) watch
everything, but a multiplicity of watchers, interested in diverse aspects of
behaviour and differently nested in market economies. And these manifold
forms of surveillance are often far more complicate to
grasp and challenge.

From this perspective, the motto ‘you have nothing to
worry about’ is as sinister as the menacing Big Brother’s slogan. By way of
reassurance or threat, they aim to pre-empt forms of radical critique on the
current state of affairs, or the formulation of alternatives to mass and
targeted surveillance. Through different strategies, they pursue the foreclosure
of the possibility of politics.

Moving towards
politics

The philosopher Jacques Rancière noted that politics
starts when the common perception of the sensible is scattered. It is not just
a matter of denouncing a status quo, but rather an effort to show the
intricacies of the socio(-technical) fabric, and to modify it so that other,
previously marginalised elements, can count. Most probably, Edward Snowden’s
performance as Big Brother is an attempt to play one surveillance slogan against
the other. However, robot-Snowden might be of limited use to move towards a
more radical discussion about the role of surveillance in democratic societies,
unless the opportunity is taken to see through him the very complexities of
this discussion.

Snowden’s revelations prove that revealing covert
surveillance is enlightening, but that it will never dissipate darkness. Snowden
himself, interrogated by Members of the European Parliament on any important information
yet to be disclosed, has insisted that he puts any decisions regarding what the
world needs to know in the hands of journalists. There are limits to
transparency, even in the eyes of the lone, heroic, whistle-blower, who
additionally claims not to be in a position to perceive them clearly enough.
Whatever future revelations bring, they might still leave the world waiting for
the ultimate revelation.

Perhaps, the coming into being of robot-Snowden is this
ultimate revelation. Edward Snowden turned Big Brother invites us to face the
current deadlock, accept the uselessness of the wait, and simply address the
need to move towards politics. To advance in this direction does not require any
new disclosures, whether they were expected to be delivered on a wheeled
monitor, on the front pages of newspapers, or by suddenly translucent private
companies or governments. It just requires insisting on democratic institutions
and political representatives to engage with surveillance beyond scandals. We
have to start considering the framing of surveillance as a constitutive
operation in the making of contemporary political communities. This involves a permanent
challenge of the range, scope, and aim of surveillance, as well as its role in
the wider political economy, and to start thinking (and acting) beyond old or
new slogans.

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